Consenting Adults: Responding to a cannibal
Charles Colson
Three years ago in Germany Armin Meiwes placed a personal ad on the Internet, seeking "a young, well-built man who wants to be eaten."
That's twisted all by itself, but it's not the worst part of the story. The worst part is that someone answered the ad. Bernd Brandes, a man who is said to have had an obsession with pain, allowed himself to be killed and eaten by Meiwes. As a psychiatrist later determined, Meiwes had severe "emotional problems," and last month, he was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison.
But some argue that he didn't commit a crime. In fact, the case raises some very disturbing questions for a society like Germany's and ours. The idea of an unchangeable moral law given by God has been abandoned. The idea today is that we're autonomous--we're free to do whatever we want, as long as we don't hurt somebody else. That puts us in an awkward position when we try to determine just what Meiwes did wrong. By what standard can a modern secularist argue that Meiwes did anything wrong?
Read the entire article on the Breakpoint website.